This kind of feels like a troll and has a high probability of degrading, but I'd say there's a couple of reasons to tape. The tape on the back of peoples hands is to protect them when jamming their hands into cracks, the skin on the palms of your hands can toughen up, but the skin in the backs of your hands doesn't toughen up much.

Some people tape their individual fingers to give tendons some support. Some folks also will tape their fingers to keep skin from tearing or to keep torn skin from tearing more.

Some people never tape, and some people tape all the time. I wear crack gloves (tape on the back of my hands) some times, but I find the better I get with my jams, the less I need to tape.

Try climbing Joshua Tree cracks with little in the way of crack skills and you will find out quick!

On the money. Climb some cracks that have rough rock anyplace for that matter.

On a recent trip to Vedauwoo, I witnessed some kind of outdoor education type group doing a day trip. Instructor taking a big group of brand new climbers, all in their late teens to early twenties. I don't recall if either of the two instructors were using tape, but I didn't see a spec of climbing tape on any of the dozen n00bs they were carting around.

Usually either to protect (or serve in place of) skin, or to support and/or protect tendons and pulleys.

On my last trip, I cut my fingertip on a particularly sharp crimp. I thought I was done on the climb, as it was deep and bloody, but I h-taped it and it worked like gangbusters. On another climb, one of the only rests was a fist jam that was bomber if you were willing to give up a fair amount of skin on your wrist. Just a single layer of tape had me resting in comfort on my second go.

My hands are really bad for tearing. If you have calisus' on your hands they catch and tear big flaps of skin. So to prevent this i tape my fingers. Instead you can moisturise your hands or use sand paper on rough skin before climbing.

Try climbing Joshua Tree cracks with little in the way of crack skills and you will find out quick!

everyone should note though that tape comes off of fingers very easily. i pull old tape out of almost every crack i do here in joshua tree. noobs tend to wrap their finger tips and then as soon as they start to sweat that tape just slides straight off. i would highly suggest just dealing with the pain. it will make your hand technique improve a lot faster and soon enough it wont bother you. now this isnt to say you should never tape finger tips because we've all been there where you are bleeding and want to keep going, but that's different than just having sore noob fingers

My hands are really bad for tearing. If you have calisus' on your hands they catch and tear big flaps of skin. So to prevent this i tape my fingers. Instead you can moisturise your hands or use sand paper on rough skin before climbing.

I am 50 years old and not happy about it. Anyway, I work part-time in a very small climbing gym at the local Y. When I am working I do 98% of the belaying. I do more work than I do climbing.

When I do a lot of climbing the joints in one of my fingers tends to hurt and even hurts more when I am belaying while on the job. So, using athletic tape gently wrapped around my finger takes the pain away and helps the recovery process. How I wrap tape around my finger: I tear off about 5 inches from the roll and then tear that piece in half. So I end up with two strips for one finger which gives that one finger joint freedom of movement. Believe me, it really works to remove the pain when I am climbing or belaying.